Description

The Calvinist Reformation is characterized above all by a focus on church discipline enforced by church courts known as consistories. The Geneva consistory served as the model and mother institution throughout the Calvinist world. In this book, Robert M. Kingdon surveys the theoretical underpinnings of the Calvinist emphasis on discipline and how theory was put into practice by John Calvin in Reformation Geneva. Professor Kingdon looks in turn at how the Geneva consistory and the pastors and councilors who staffed it reformed religious practice, religious education and marriage practices. Finally, Robert M. Kingdon uses the emotion of hatred as a lens to examine how Calvin and his colleagues attempted to reform emotions. He delves into the way in which Calvin and his colleagues employed the consistory to attenuate interpersonal hatred, while employing propaganda to whip up interconfessional hatred.